Sarah Warner
Cite this Page
"Sarah Warner," White House Workers History Project, White House Historical Association, 2026, https://whha.whirlihost.com/Detail/workers/62.
- Position
- Laundress
- Years in President's House
- circa 1789
- Legal Status
- Free Person
- Gender
- Female
- Race/Ethnicity
- Unclear from Context
- Presidency
- George Washington
- Biography
- Information about Sarah Warner’s life outside of the President’s House is currently unknown. Sarah appears once in household account documents related to George Washington’s first presidential household in New York. In May 1789, she was paid for “washing 8 doz pieces of Linen for the President & 2 doz for Jacob.” She also did “6 doz pieces Linen” for Washington’s private secretary, Tobias Lear. In a book exploring Lear’s accounts of Washington’s household, the author, Stephen Decatur, Jr., notes that Tobias Lear “did not attempt to organize this department until after Mrs. Washington’s arrival.” In Martha’s absence, Lear likely hired domestic staff as needed until she arrived to take charge of the household. Therefore, Sarah Warner may have been a brief contract hire.1
- Stephen Decatur, Jr., Private Affairs of George Washington: from the Records and Accounts of Tobias Lear, Esquire, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933), 253, 277, 19.
- Birthplace
- Unclear from Context
- Unclear from Context